“Director Han is doing a good job, isn’t she? Besides, aren’t I originally in charge of VIP clients rather than artists?”
“Well… I suppose so.”
But the question was why he was personally taking an interest in one particular artist, and for whatever reason, he seemed to have no intention of explaining. She knew well from years of experience that trying to probe his mind when he wasn’t ready was a futile effort.
As far as she knew, he was the type of person who would thoroughly ignore those he had no interest in as if they were invisible (and without much effort at that), and who wouldn’t hide his hostility, to the point of cruelty, toward those he disliked.
Clients and artists were exceptions, but in some cases, it extended even to them. He would compromise for the sake of business, but it wasn’t his way to just be a thoughtless pushover for business either. He had his own lines.
Since Yeehyeon was the one he had shown interest in from the beginning while feigning indifference, it was nothing new to her that he held a special interest in Yeehyeon, whether as a painter or on a more personal level.
“About Seo Yeehyeon.”
“……”
No sooner had he taken a second bite of his sandwich than Yeehyeon’s name came up again.
“Did he show talent back when Director Han taught him?”
It seemed the real reason he had called her here today wasn’t for the cute reason that he didn’t want to eat lunch alone. She took a sip of coffee, quickly chewed and swallowed the sandwich in her mouth, and then answered.
“He was very special. He was usually gentle and quiet, and for his age, he never threw tantrums. But when it came to art, he was full of ambition and tenacity, and he knew how to enjoy that ambition and tenacity. And he was an incredible practice bug. Though he thought of it more as play than practice.”
After listening to her story as she reminisced with a look of pleasure, the man stood up, taking a few notebooks that had been placed neatly on one side of his messy desk, and slowly walked over to the seat opposite her. As he plopped down onto the sofa, the scent of cologne wafted from him.
Both his paternal and maternal families were traditionally wealthy, and by the time he was born, his mother was already on her way to becoming a world-renowned painter. As such, he was naturally imbued with the stylishness peculiar to the upper class, and his tastes were both unique and refined, but he wasn’t the type to spray on cologne as the final step of getting ready to go out. As someone who extremely avoided emitting pheromones, he had little interest in adorning himself with fragrance.
She didn’t know to what extent he himself was aware of it, but he was certainly doing things he ‘didn’t used to do’ these days.
“These are the ‘practice’ sketches Seo Yeehyeon did after he moved into my place. Take a look.”
From here on was a part of Yeehyeon’s story she didn’t know. She, too, was interested in the drawings of a twenty-two-year-old Yeehyeon.
Putting down her sandwich and wiping her hands with a tissue, she gently suppressed the tension and anticipation that made her heart pound for the first time in a while and picked up a drawing notebook.
There were four or five notebooks, each filled with more than thirty pages, and every page was packed with meticulous drawings.
What she held in her hands was not some easy magic conjured by innate talent. It was the result of faithful time, of not lying to art day after day, of moving one’s hand and dedicating paper.
“When Yeehyeon and I parted, he had just turned twelve, and even then he had a formidable technique for his age, but it wasn’t to this extent…”
Even if he had put down his brush right after winning the award for ‘Isolation’, the calculation was that Yeehyeon had continued to paint for nearly five more years after they had parted. If he had painted for five more years with the diligence she knew he possessed, it wasn’t unbelievable that he had reached the level of the sketches she was now seeing.
“The fact that Seo Yeehyeon stopped painting. It wasn’t something like he just naturally drifted away from art over time, was it?”
Slowly flipping through the notebook, page by page, she lifted her gaze to look at the man across from her.
“……What do you mean?”
Without touching his own sandwich or coffee, the man asked for her leave and lit a cigarette. Then he bent forward, rested his elbows on his thighs, and took a deep first drag.
“The previous painting he did, I’ve only seen ‘Isolation’, but there was a tremendous energy in it. Whatever his usual personality… when he was painting, he could be completely free… As if no one was watching him, as if he was guaranteed a perfect secret that no one would ever discover, he had a boldness that didn’t hesitate to reveal himself. That kind of painting isn’t something you can just get lucky and draw. Nor is it something you can obtain just by practicing, like technique. Suki Kim actively recommended him for the special prize because she discovered that in ‘Isolation’.”
Rubbing his forehead with the hand holding the cigarette, his arm still propped on his thigh, he pointed to the notebook spread open on the table.
“But these sketches.”
“……”
“They possess not only an astonishing level of technique but also a distinct individuality, to the point where it’s impossible to believe they’re the work of someone who has rested for several years… but they don’t contain his own perspective on anything.”
“……”
She couldn’t help but agree with that statement.
Some sketches were as precise as photographs, and some croquis were full of unpredictably fresh expressiveness, but Yeehyeon’s drawings were devoid of the artist’s own voice that had once thrilled her.
To her, who knew the Yeehyeon of the past, these sketches were like a child refusing to speak.
“To others, maybe, but to Seo Yeehyeon, this isn’t painting. Because he’s not telling his own story at all.”
She had acknowledged his extraordinary insight into art and artists since they worked together in Hong Kong, but she couldn’t help but be surprised that he could grasp that much about an artist whose work he had only encountered once, as he said. She wondered if it was a limited ability that manifested only because the subject was Seo Yeehyeon, but there was no way to confirm it.
While she felt a moment of confusion, his face, hidden behind sunglasses, turned toward her.
“Seo Yeehyeon, why did he stop painting?”
He was wearing dark sunglasses, but looking at him up close, the faint outline of his eyes was visible.
“Are you asking… me?”
At her question, he turned his face away as if to evade and flicked his cigarette ash into the crystal ashtray.
“CEO Liu, you’re not the type to try to hear such things through others. No, you don’t even ask the person himself. You first found out I had been married when you learned I got divorced, right?”
“Whether you’re married or not is… unnecessary information for working together.”
Offering a very flimsy excuse for the string of ‘uncharacteristic behaviors’ he was displaying, he took a deep drag of his cigarette.
“Yeehyeon is the one who paints… but information about why Yeehyeon quit painting in the past, that’s necessary for you, CEO Liu? So much so that you’d ask me instead of him?”
“……”
What was important to her was whether he was properly facing his own changes and the reasons for them.
While he remained silent, inhaling his cigarette, the ice in the plastic cup melted and clinked against each other.
“A light that doesn’t know its own value is a nuisance.”
His languid voice, when he finally spoke after a long while, sounded like he was talking to himself.
“It’s like a psychic who doesn’t know how powerful he is, and so doesn’t know how to control that power and goes around breaking everything. He doesn’t act with consideration for the ripple effect of his influence, so even when a storm rages around him, he has no idea that the phenomenon before his eyes is a result of his own doing. As an artist, and as an individual, such a person is difficult to deal with. Director Han, you must know.”
Pausing for a moment, he took a short, deep drag of his cigarette and flicked the ash with a slightly anxious motion.
“Seo Yeehyeon has no idea what great talent he possesses. No, even if he did, he wouldn’t care. His relative position isn’t what’s important to him. He just made the difficult decision to reclaim painting, which was his language and his identity, and in doing so, he just wants to exist as himself once more. Without complaining to anyone, trying to stand up on his own even if it takes a long time, and thinking that doing so is the only way to repay the people who helped him…”
She didn’t know to what extent he himself was aware of it, but the words he was now pouring out without restraint were proof of how long and seriously he had been observing and studying Yeehyeon.
It sounded like a confession… as if he himself, Liu Weikun, was having a hard time, being tossed about and broken here and there by the storm wielded by a young light who didn’t know its own ripple effect.
“If it’s to help him find his voice within his art… I thought I needed to know everything, past or whatever. Of course, if Director Han judges that she can’t talk about it… I can’t force you to.”
Even as he said that, his face, as he stubbed out the shortened cigarette, was practically dripping with the lingering desire to know, one way or another.
“But, could you just tell me one thing?”
“……”
His hands, now without a cigarette, clasped together tightly as his face turned toward her. Though half-hidden by sunglasses, it wasn’t difficult to read the anxiety, bordering on fear, on his face.
He hesitated, his lips parting and closing several times.
“Was he… abused? Or, did he experience… something terrible… Is it something like that?”
His expression was pained just from imagining and voicing such a tragedy. His face was less asking a question and more pleading for her to tell him he was completely off the mark.
This unfamiliar sight of him, hesitating and afraid before another’s past, made her somewhat uneasy. A new side of a close acquaintance one thought they knew well was more often disconcerting than refreshing. It was like the daily commute you could navigate with your eyes closed had been completely rerouted overnight.
At the thought that his interest in Yeehyeon might be deeper and heavier than she had anticipated, she wet her lower lip with her tongue. She didn’t know whether to welcome it or be wary of it.
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